Currently, consumer or professional publishers with the desire to create multimedia content for the Internet find the process extremely cumbersome. Using existing technology it is difficult for consumers to create multimedia presentations. Narrative—or playable—content on the internet primarily exists in the form of streaming video. This poses several problems for content creators. First of all, media consumers are sophisticated and recognize the difference between professionally produced video projects and amateur ones. Most consumer devices display High Definition video and most people are used to seeing that level of quality in media they consume. Therefore, a producer of online content must invest significant time and money to create video content at the level to which consumers have grown accustomed. Producer must hire a professional production crew, on-camera talent and equipment—such as professional lighting kit, high-end cameras, and audio gear. There may even be legal concerns such as talent releases and rights to music and images.
The video post-production process is also time consuming. Consumers use a variety of offline tools (including Apple's iMovie software and Microsoft's PowerPoint) to generate multimedia. The output produced by these tools is then saved to a user's hard drive and uploaded to sites allowing users to share the output with friends and colleagues (such as with YouTube, SlideShare, etc.). Professional publishers wishing to create appealing multimedia presentations follow the same process with a set of more expensive software packages (e.g. Final Cut Pro or Avid). Each piece of software not only requires a financial commitment, but there is also a high learning curve when it comes to using it. Producing professional video may also require a skilled editor with technical and story-telling skills, a graphic designer, special effects artist and narrator. Editing software also requires sophisticated, expensive and fast computing/storage equipment and therefore uses a lot of computing resources.
Another issue for consumers is the inadequate information that results from a traditional internet search result. Generally, when an end user performs an Internet search, the search engine produces a search results page (also called a “SERF”). On that page is a list of results with hyperlinks and a sentence or two about each result. That text is machine-selected by proprietary algorithms unique to each search engine—as opposed to being curated by humans. Often, it is not an adequate description of the linked site. That selected text is called a “caption.” Captions were first invented when there was no rich media on the web and, therefore, were only text-based. This method of displaying search results has changed very little in fifteen years. Users are forced to visit a plurality of web sites to discover information they are seeking. The experience is cumbersome and time consuming.
As set forth below, one or more features of the present inventions may overcome these or other drawbacks and/or otherwise impart innovative aspects.